Pietro Melandri - Vase - Ceramic

Splendid and rare vase made in Faenza with a blue under-glaze signature at the base, reading "Faenza - M", corresponding to Pietro Melandri's production for the Fratelli Minardi pottery in Faenza, dating from the early 1920s. Hand-painted with grotesque faces, mythological scenes, lake and sea landscapes, and with stylized and polychrome floral motifs. It rests on three fixed feet (slight defect on one) and is slightly tilted. Splendid enamel finish on an intense cobalt blue background. Pietro Melandri worked for the Fratelli Minardi at the beginning of his career. Such items are considered collectible and often decorated in Renaissance style with grotesques or heraldic coats of arms. Size: Height 26.5 cm, diameter 24.5 cm. Pietro Melandri is the son of Agostino and Colomba Grilli. He enrolled in Faenza in the evening courses of the Scuola di arti e mestieri of Antonio Berti and at the same time worked as an apprentice at the Minardi brothers’ ceramic factory, Venturino and Virginio, where he trained with glazes and lustres, typical of early 20th-century Central Italian ceramic production, between 1897 and 1905. In the same period he met Domenico Baccarini and joined his cenacle. In 1906, after a period in the Salerno area where he executed mural decorations, he went to Milan to attend the Scenography evening courses at the Brera Academy and the Applied Arts courses at the Castello Sforzesco. He sustained his studies by collaborating in set decoration. 1906 is also the year of his debut—as a painter and pastel draftsman—in an exhibition in Faenza organized by the "Società per il risveglio cittadino". In 1908 he sent paintings to the Torricelliana Exposition. Recalled to military service in 1916, he served in the Bersaglieri, was captured, and deported to a camp at the border with Hungary….